The "pro-Israel" lobby, one of Washington's most powerful special interests, is often portrayed as a congressional puppet master when it comes to manipulating votes on matters pertaining to the Middle East.

But that may not apply when it comes to the current debate over whether to bomb Syria for its use of chemical weapons - at least in terms of how the Bay Area delegation is behaving.

An analysis of campaign contributions to the Bay Area delegation shows that support for taking military action against Syria, a position backed by pro-Israel advocates in the United States, does not correlate with the amount of campaign contributions Bay Area House members received from the lobby in the 2011-12 election cycle.

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It's another sign of how the region's usually rock-solid, all-Democratic House delegation is not behaving in typical lockstep fashion on the Syria question.

House members

While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, a strong voice backing President Obama's position to take military action, received far more in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups than the national average for House members in the last House election cycle, and so did Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), who strongly opposes attacking Syria. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, also received more than the national average, but came out against a strike on Wednesday.

In the Senate, Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, both of whom support taking military action against Syria, received far more than the average contribution collected by their Senate colleagues from pro-Israel organizations from Jan. 1, 2007 to Dec. 31, 2012, a six-year Senate term, according to an analysis done for The Chronicle by Maplight, a nonpartisan organization that analyzes the effect of money on politics.

It's hard to say that pro-Israel money is shaping the Syria debate, at least now.

"It's hard to be effective right now because the issue is such a moving target," said Steve Weber, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley and a Middle East policy expert. "This issue is really of its own kind, and there are so many intersecting sectors of interest that it's hard to say one is the most influential."

While the Israel lobby's influence is often compared with AARP and pharmaceutical companies, its pocketbook isn't as large.

A collection of political action committees whose primary purpose was to support Israel economically and in negotiations with neighboring Arab countries contributed $10 million to members of Congress in the 2011-12 campaign cycle, with nearly two-thirds going to Democrats.

That ranked 25th among industries, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The No. 1 interest contributor to Congress, according to the Center: lawyers and law firms.

Washington's pro-Israel lobby is less about making political contributions than about influencing the debate in other ways, analysts say.

Suggesting solutions

Kori Schake, who served on the National Security Council for George W. Bush and as a foreign policy adviser for GOP Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, described the lobby as extremely well-versed on U.S. policy - and adroit in suggesting possible solutions.

During the McCain campaign, Schake said pro-Israel advocates suggested a better way to sanction Iran than Congress could. Some of them suggested pressuring insurers who do business with shipping companies that haul Iranian oil. Such a move could jack up the price of oil and hurt the Iranian economy.

The lead organization is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, commonly known as AIPAC, which doesn't make campaign contributions, but instead focuses on lobbying.

Limited strike

AIPAC and Israel support a limited military strike on Syria because Israel wants to discourage its more dangerous neighbor Iran and other enemies from using chemical weapons. In a statement last week, AIPAC urged the U.S. to "take a firm stand that the world's most dangerous regimes cannot obtain and use the most dangerous weapons."

But for weeks before that, AIPAC was largely silent on a U.S. strike on Syria.

Steven J. Rosen, who served for 23 years as a senior official of AIPAC, wrote this month in Foreign Policy that it was the Obama administration that called on AIPAC to lobby hard for a Syria strike - not the other way around.

Rosen, now director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum, wrote: "President Obama is making everyone stand up and be counted, and he is putting maximum pressure on all prospective allies to come out from behind the curtain and speak up."

The real measurement of AIPAC's power on this issue may not be visible until after Congress votes on the Syrian situation, analysts say.

"The most telling number," said Schake, now a research fellow at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution think tank, "may be their campaign contributions after a vote (on Syria) is taken."

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